Chris Waldren Photography

A few words .....

WHY BLACK & WHITE?

Why is it in Black and White?

This is a question I am often asked when showing pictures to friends, after all, the world is full of colour isn’t it, so why would I want to ignore that colour and represent the world in a medium that logically should have become obsolete with the invention and perfection of colour film?

Although they use the real world as their subject and inspiration, landscape photographs are by their very nature never a ‘true’ representation of visual reality. The photographer chooses which landscape to set up camera in and what part of that landscape to include within the viewfinder, and then decides what particular moment in time to capture when firing the shutter. This may all happen very quickly as a reaction to the unexpected discovery of a previously unknown vista, or it may be the final act of days of planning and preparation but in either case the resulting image is an abstract of (rather than a representation of) reality.

The photographer who chooses to abandon colour and restrict the image to black, white and shades of grey is simply extending that process of abstraction.

The absence of colour and its various cultural and sometimes overwhelming emotional connotations, leaves the viewer free from the distractions this can provoke and allows concentration on those elements which are, in my view, the real essence of a landscape – shape, texture, pattern, light and shade – and the use of the arrangement and relative emphasis of these elements to induce mood and feeling in the viewer.

This ‘abstract’ view helps move the image beyond a simple statement of what was in front of the camera to become an interpretation rather than a record.

Revised August 2009, Chris Waldren